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I am a big fan of build automation. As a developer, the last thing I want to waste my time doing is compiling and distributing my software. Countless technologies are available that can play a part in automating your build process. Tools like Make, Ant, Maven, and Gradle can define the steps required to build the software. JUnit can be used for unit testing, and plugins like Findbugs and Checkstyle can be used to check code quality. Then, HockeyApp can be used to distribute apps to test users (or even end users). All of these processes can be executed automatically by a tool like Jenkins. Jenkins is an amazingly powerful tool that pulls all the above together in a nice web-interface with countless plugins available to accomplish just about any development task. So long as your project can be build using command line tools, Jenkins can build it for you. Unfortunately, there is one exception that really sticks out — iOS. Sure, you can build an iOS application using Jenkins, but you will find that you spend nearly as much time managing a failed build process as you would spend manually building and deploying the app yourself. I have dozens and dozens of tasks that I have automated with Jenkins – Android builds, JBoss applications, C apps, scripts, REST calls, and iOS builds. The only processes that ever requires my attention are the iOS builds. Why is iOS build automation so painful? Well, once you try it you realize very quickly that Apple does not intend for you to use anything but the Xcode environment for development. Switching profiles, certificates, etc require all kinds of ruby scripts and a detailed knowledge of the iOS build process. There is no simple ‘make’ command you can run to build the application. Certificates cause all kind of problems too. New developer on the team? Great – plan on the build breaking when he checks in the project with a new certificate you don’t have on the build server. New hardware to test against? Don’t plan on using any of the existing builds — they won’t work until you add the device to your profile and install new certificates. Time to pay your annual fee as an Apple developer? Be ready to install new certificates on Jenkins. Sure you can try to automate some of the certificate mayhem, but plan to enter all of your Apple developer passwords, keychain passwords, and any other password or key you can imagine into Jenkins to try to accomplish the build. Then, when it comes time to deploy to quality assurance staff or test users in your organization, plan for a whole new round of fun. Apple really doesn’t want you using anything but their TestFlight tools. I could go on, but you get the point — iOS + build automation = pain. I love Apple’s line of laptops, which are a dream for developers. I just wish their iOS platform wasn’t such a nightmare to work with.

Anybody who knows me knows well that I value education. I have studied countless languages, formally trained in both locksmithing and herbal medicine, achieved a third degree black belt in taekwondo, and earned an associates degree in psychology. But what surprises most people is that I don’t have a degree in computer science. In fact, even the degree I do have was earned through a correspondence school less than 10 years ago. I did not go to college out of high school, I joined the army. And, just about everything I know about programming I taught myself. Why does this matter? Well, in today’s society there still seems to be a strong desire for candidates applying for programming positions to have a bachelors degree in computer science. Many job listing require a bachelors at a minimum. The unfortunate thing is that most of the best programmers I have ever encountered did not have a degree in computer science and many had no degree at all. Throughout my career, I have always been identified as among the best when it came time for reviews — so a degree is not necessary for someone to ascend to the top of the class. So what is needed? Programming is an art that is learned through doing — not through formal education. And that is where the problem begins. I have interviewed countless candidates for programming positions with degrees and, sadly, few of them really knew the first thing about programming. They had attended years of college, but couldn’t identify the objects in a problem or design a trivial database to house the corresponding data. Why? Because they had never actually programmed much of anything. Maybe they implemented a stack, a linked list, or a sorting algorithm. And, while an understanding of those things is important, they already exist in the libraries of every language out there. Have they ever written anything more than that? Typically, I hear graduates tell me about one or two projects they worked on. They have a degree, but they’ve only ever written one or two real programs. What’s the value to that? Their piece of paper has come with no actual knowledge or expertise. We seriously need to revamp our education system to focus on real world training and spend less time on the things which bring no value to the business world. If we do not, we will continue to watch computer-related jobs go to foreign firms that are better trained and cheaper than our own fellow Americans.

In the 90’s, an amazing thing happened – Linux was born. This small project has had a profound impact on the world of technology. Not only did it create a Unix clone, it advanced the open source movement by leaps and bounds. During the decade after the creation of Linux, companies, like Microsoft, would argue against the idea of open source and attack Linux. But then, in the early 2000’s, things started to change for the Linux movement from an unlikely source – Apple. The new Mac OS X would use BSD (an operating system very similar to Linux) as the core of the operating system. The Linux world was very excited about this! The change meant that Unix/Linux hackers had support for Unix on a commercial operating system. Now, it seems that developers across the globe are using Macs for development. Why? Because services like Google Cloud and AWS, as well as Docker, use Linux. Mac users can develop cloud applications on their machine to be deployed to Linux servers and have similar environments on both. Where does Windows come into the picture? Microsoft has fought against these technologies, and has even come up with their own competing cloud service – Azure. But, as more and more developers jump ship to Linux or Mac, Windows needs to move. And over the last several years they have. Microsoft’s .NET Core is not only open source, but it also runs cross-platform – an idea that seems almost blasphemous to the Microsoft of a decade ago. And, as of last fall, Windows 10 includes the option to install Bash support on Windows. Indeed, it would appear that Microsoft has seen the writing on the wall and is working to change the direction of their company to be more friendly to the Unix world that has secretly been in control of computing since the dawn of technology. But is it too little too late? Can Microsoft lure developers back with a Bash shell? Time will tell. But, as for this Unix user, I’m glad to see the change.

One of the biggest problems I see among practitioners of the tech arts is the square peg — round hole problem. Too many developers, for example, will use only one language to solve every problem they encounter. I am a Java expert — there isn’t anything I can’t write a Java program to do. However, there are things for which Java just isn’t well suited. A few years back, I needed a program to download several hundred thousand audio files. As a Java guru, my first thought was how I would solve this problem in Java. Since the server used REST services, I would need to either include REST client libraries or write my own client software. I would need to iterate through the hundreds of thousands of record numbers to download. And, of course, I would need to keep track of state, distribute across numerous servers, parallelize the process, and deal with recovery should the program crash. All of these things end up creating a rather large code base in Java that would have also required substantial testing. Then it occurred to me, why not use a shell script? I can output the audio file id numbers into a text file and split into chunks using the split command. I can use curl as the rest client. Then, I can just have multiple windows open and assign each running instance a chunk of the original list. The solution involved almost no code, the individual pieces are production ready, and recovery would just mean reprocessing the incomplete files. This is just one example, but this problem happens every day in the tech world — developers resorting to the single tool in their toolbox to solve a problem when far better solutions can be crafted with far more ease using a different tool. Ultimately, while I know every programmer will have a language they are most competent in, I believe everyone should have skills in a variety of other tools so they don’t end up wasting time crafting solutions for which their tools aren’t well suited.

There are countless technologies for web development running both on the desktop (Muse, Dreamweaver, etc) as well as the server (WordPress, Drupal, etc). I think one of the most underrated solutions is RapidWeaver 7. My first web page was a video game site hosted on GeoCities in the 90’s. Since then, I’ve had a hand in countless websites ranging from simple sites for local non-profits to complex e-commerce sites for major corporations. With 20+ years of web experience, what do I like about RapidWeaver 7? I think my favorite feature of RapidWeaver is how approachable it is for people without web experience, yet it’s easy for the web expert to get in and change almost anything. Options to override CSS, enter custom JavaScript, add code to the head of the document, add metadata, or anything else you can imagine are just a click away. I also like RapidWeaver’s built-in blogging framework, options to enter HTML, markdown, or to use a styled text editor. No matter how you want to create content, RapidWeaver supports it. RapidWeaver has countless plugins and themes that can be added. One of the most common is the Stacks plugin. With Stacks and RapidWeaver, it is trivial to create a responsive website that will look great on any device. Another amazing feature of RapidWeaver is how easy it is to integrate with PHP. If you have content that needs to be programmatically generated, but you still what the style to match the rest of your page, no problem — simply change the page’s extension to .php and enter your code in the HTML editor. I love how you can enter your content and change your theme with a simple click of the button. In a world of Software as a Service, it’s also nice to see that I can still purchase a license for RapidWeaver instead of a subscription. Note, as a developer, I rarely pay for software — most things I want are freely available for download. RapidWeaver is a piece of software I am all too happy to pay for. The features above don’t even begin to scratch the surface of the richness of the application and I believe it is worth every penny I paid for it.

For most of my life, I viewed Macs with great disdain. They had little software, and I just didn’t see them as particularly useful as a developer. My first experiences with computers were all with Unix machines — and I loved them. The ability to program them with built-in tools as well as their stability meant they were all around great machines. But as a home user, I didn’t have the luxury of a Unix Sparc machine. Like most home users, I was forced to use Windows and grew accustomed to the issues they always have — registry problems, boot problems, driver problems, on and on the list goes. After a while, I got tired of the endless problems with my Windows machine and, when Linux became a viable option, I switched my home computer to RedHat. I got the stability I wanted, and substantially fewer problems than my Windows computers presented. But, there has always been one big problem with Linux – it doesn’t always have the software you want. For example, you can’t run Photoshop on Linux. When I started doing iOS development at work a couple years ago, I had to use a Mac, and I fell in love immediately. The stability of Linux as well as most of the same command line utilities, shell scripting, and the addition of an excellent graphical interface made for an amazing user experience. Even better, most of the software I want to use is available on my Mac – the Adobe Creative Cloud, Android development tools, Java environment, and Unity. In addition, most of my favorite command line tools are there including C, C++, Python, Shell, and countless others. It truly is the best of both worlds AND it’s remarkably stable. That doesn’t even mention how lightweight a MacBook Pro is, it’s amazing battery life, or any of the other reasons I use a Mac. I don’t look back at the Windows world. While I often need to use Windows for development (Visual Studio projects, for example), I do so while sadly longing for my Mac.

As I start my blog, I thought the first thing I would write about is some of my favorite technologies. As a tech guy, I have experimented with a variety of technologies throughout the years. Some have been wins (Java, Unity, Docker, REST), and some have not (Delphi, IIS, SOAP). What are some of the technologies that really stand out to me? First, I love Java. The fact that I can write web applications as well as desktop applications that will run anywhere is amazing. I used to write C/C++ code, and while the promise of write once run anywhere is there, your mileage will vary. Java actually delivers flawlessly. The fact that Google chose Java for Android was just icing on the cake. Second on my list is Unity. For 3D game development, nothing is better than Unity. Not only can you create awesome 3D games, but you can do so with a modern, easy-to-use language (C#). In addition, Unity can export games to just about every platform imaginable including various consoles! Third would be the Adobe Creative Cloud. I must admit I am a relative newcomer to the Creative Cloud, but their tools are amazing. I doubt there is any creative endeavor in the digital world that their products won’t work to create. Not only is the breadth of their products amazing, each individual product is an industry leader – Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign are best-in-class products. There are lots of other technologies available, but these three represent some of the best tools I believe the IT world has to offer.